Dense Subplots Slow ‘Hunchback’

It’s a highbrow premise chock-full of high-concept promise--combine the gothic brooding of “Phantom” with the fervent social conscience of “Les Miz” in a musical adaptation of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

Unfortunately, the implementation doesn’t make it over the professional hump. Grand ambition exceeds artistic reach in this elaborate, painfully earnest production at Culver City’s Ivy Substation. Director-writer Gary B. Lamb’s book and lyrics try to encompass the narrative scope of Victor Hugo’s novel, but the resulting one-note moral about inner purity versus skin-deep beauty hardly warrants the show’s dense layering of melodramatic subplots.

The problem isn’t where to start cutting--it’s where to stop. Prime candidates are many of the songs, which keep rehashing the same psychological ground. They’re not helped by William A. Reilly’s synthesized score, which even in its most somber moments seems more at home in a theme park.

Joe J. Garcia dons the role of the deformed Quasimodo (adorned with noteworthy makeup by Michael Kubick) and brings the work its greatest measure of success with his anguished songs to the god who stirred hopeless feelings in his heart.

Agreeable Angela Pupello plays the beautiful, naive Gypsy who rings his chimes. Unfortunately, she has much the same effect on the entire male population of Paris, setting the stage for star-crossed tragedy involving a callow soldier (Aaron Kjenaas) and the noble Archdeacon of Notre Dame Cathedral (a particularly effective Robert Winley) undone by his repressed impulses.

Most of the remaining 25 performers evoke the grungy, downtrodden masses we’ve come to expect in a Victor Hugo-inspired musical, but they’re still less miserable than the audience.

* “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends Feb. 25. $19.50-$24.50. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.